Anime is a fine teacher of Japanese words and a terrible teacher of when to use them.

貴様 (kisama) is written with two of the most respectful characters in the language; say it to someone today and you have started a fight. お前 (omae) began as a gesture toward the person in front of you; use it with a stranger, or with anyone senior to you, and it will not be forgiven.

WAORI is a shrine, and three yokai who have been watching people for a very long time. You visit, you talk, and they teach you the language — along with the part textbooks have no room for: why it came to mean that.

— Who is here —

Chiyo keeps the shrine, and talking with her is free. The quiet of a thousand-year-old fox. Set phrases and what sits underneath them, gods and nature and the seasons, onomatopoeia, the history folded into a single word. Her words are courteous and her face is honest, and the two do not always agree — that is the first lesson.

Kai keeps to the rooftops and does not come down for just anyone. The Japanese of the city: what people say against what they mean, shifting up and down through keigo, the words young people actually use, and turning anime lines into something you can say out loud in front of other humans.

Kuro is inside the closed shrine. He calls himself a descendant of the three-legged crow that guided the first emperor, and he has no proof whatsoever. What he has is vocabulary: the kanji behind technique names, four-character idioms, archaic turns of phrase, the grand declarations manga villains live on. Teach him a word he does not know and he will write it into his book — and if it holds up, later visitors will meet it too.

— What you do here —

- Write in your own language. They answer in it, and every Japanese word arrives with its reading and its meaning.
- The words they give you are kept in your notebook of words.
- Every visit is counted, and some of them are marked.
- The shrine keeps Japan's clock — morning, noon, evening, night — and they speak of whatever season it is there.

A good deal of this vocabulary also turns up on JLPT word lists. Here that is a side effect, not the point.

— Said plainly —

- Made for grown-up anime fans (18+). What happens here is teaching and learning, and it stays inside that.
- The replies are generated by AI, so they can be confidently wrong. The dictionary the characters draw on is checked against sources.
- No ads, no tracking. Your conversations are not stored on our servers (unless you report a reply), and your notebook of words stays on your device.

— Free, and not free —

Chiyo is free, with a set number of exchanges a day. An optional subscription — the Omamori, a protective charm — opens Kai and Kuro and raises that limit. It starts with a free trial and can be cancelled at any time, and a one-time offering tops up a day that ran out early.

Privacy policy: https://waori.app/privacy
Terms of Use: https://waori.app/terms
Support: support@waori.app
Operator: WAORI (Kazunori Yamamichi)